Armin Shimerman

Armin Shimerman was born in 1949 in the small town of Lakewood, New Jersey. In 1965, his family moved to Santa Monica, California, where he attended Santa Monica High School. After school, he moved to UCLA in 1972 and graduated with an English degree, specializing in Shakespeare. He quickly became apprenticed at the San Diego Globe Theater and spent the summer working on Richard III, Loves Labour Lost and Merry Wives of Windsor. He moved to Connecticut in 1974 where his first trade union job was on Marcus Brutus in 1975 at Stage West. The following year, he appeared in the Broadway shows: Three Penny Opera alongside Raul Julia, Saint Joan with Lynn Redgrave, Broadway with Glenn Close and I Remember Mama with Liv Ullman, Richard Roger's last musical. In 1979, he met Kathryn Swink in a Broadway bar who he later married in Portland in 1981. His first TV appearance was as a repair man on Hill Street Blues and he has since guest starred on such shows as L.A. Law, Civil Wars and Alien Nation, as well as played the recurring roles of Pascal in Beauty and the Beast and Cousin Bernie in Brooklyn Bridge. He passed up an episode of Beauty and the Beast to play Letek in Star Trek: TNG, becoming the first actor in Star Trek to play a Ferengi. This led him to be cast in his famous role, that of Quark in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a role he portrayed for seven prosperous years. He was later to be cast as Principal Snyder in the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His various film credits include Arena, Blind Date and The Hitcher